Sewers could spur growth

Dirk Perrefort

Updated 11:10 pm, Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Newtown officials said they hope infrastructure improvements in the Hawleyville section of town, funded in part by a $500,000 state grant announced this week, will pave the way for additional commercial and industrial development.

The town will receive the grant through the state's Small Town Economic Assistance Program to pay for a new sewer main from Mount Pleasant Road north to Hawleyville Road and Covered Bridge Road, state Rep. Mitch Bolinsky, R-Newtown, announced Monday.

"This line is needed to spur the economic development necessary to grow our local tax base without further overburdening homeowners," Bolinsky said.

Town voters authorized $2.8 million for the project, according to Economic Development Director Elizabeth Stocker. Construction on the project is expected to begin this summer.

"Hawleyville has been considered an area of potential growth for the town for many years," she said.

Stocker said the Hawleyville area, which sits next to Interestate 84 near exit 9, has more than 200 acres of developable property, including some of the largest parcels of undeveloped land with highway access in western Connecticut.

"There is substantial property and potential in that area and we've been actively marketing it to the development community," she said.

Stocker hopes those efforts will bear fruit now that the infrastructure is being put into place.

"To tell a developer that we'll have sewers in the area soon, but without providing a time frame -- it can become very risky for them," she said. "We had several projects in the works in recent years that developers walked away from because we couldn't put a timeline on the table. Now we can tell them it should be completed by the end of the year. That makes all the difference."